In the survey, students in grades 9-11 are asked about experiences within the past six months involving four types of bullying: physical, verbal, social and cyber. “We conduct that survey each year,” Sinclair said. “We’re also conducting daily diaries with a sub-sample. For two weeks, a subsample of students carry around little diaries to report at the end of the day whether or not they had any bullying experiences.” As the study’s second year got underway, investigators added what Sinclair called an “experimental survey.” Students were presented hypothetical vignettes with different rejection scenarios, then asked to report how a “typical student” might respond. This was designed to help determine whether the presence of the certain variable increases chances of an aggressive response.
Goldberg said investigators are “discovering interesting links between groups of students and who is targeted as a victim.” Data from the first year’s longitudinal survey showed an average 47 percent of students claiming some degree of friendship with their aggressor. Additionally, the stronger the friendship, the higher the psychological and social costs of the bullying, especially cyber bullying. In year two, the researchers witnessed an increase in the number of students that viewed their aggressor’s group identity as a significant role in the bullying actions. “Bullying and aggression seem to be heavily influenced by group membership and perception of others, and students need to know so they do not continue to perpetuate old bad habits,” Sinclair said.
The NIJ project is scheduled to end in December 2018. A social experiment component during the final year brings high schoolers to the SSRC lab to take part in a version of the Cyberball paradigm designed by Kipling D. Williams, a psychological sciences professor at Purdue University.
Though conceding bullying and rejection are facts of life that “are going to happen,” she expressed profound hope that the MSU study can help education professionals and others become better equipped to deal with these situations.
“This paradigm creates the experience of being rejected by having the students play alleged video games with other players who eventually stop including the students in the game,” Sinclair said. “It’s been neuroscientifically validated to activate the pain centers of the brain, which is what social pain activates.”
“Ultimately, if you can identify pathways to pro-social and antisocial behavior as a response to rejection, then presumably you could construct interventions that increase the factors that lead to pro-social outcomes and decrease those that lead to anti-social outcomes,” Sinclair said.
COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES | VISION WINTER/SPRING 2018
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